Barley

Grain used to make beer

A cereal crop of particular importance to the Hobbits, as it was a major ingredient of beer. In the Shire, it was grown especially in the farmlands of the Northfarthing, and the crop of the year after the War of the Ring was of a particularly fine quality (as was the beer that was brewed from it). The association with this grain with brewing appears elsewhere in Middle-earth, too: Barliman Butterbur, the innkeeper of the Prancing Pony, took his given name from this crop.